Rockefeller Museum

Rockefeller Museum

Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem
Established	13 January 1938 (opening date)
Location	27 Sultan Suleiman Street, East Jerusalem
Type	Archaeology museum
Website	Rockefeller Archaeological Museum

The Rockefeller Museum, formerly the Palestine Archaeological Museum, is an archaeology museum located in East Jerusalem that houses a large collection of artifacts unearthed in the excavations conducted in Mandate Palestine, in the 1920s and 1930s.

The museum is under the management of the Israel Museum and houses the head office of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Prior to the establishment of the Rockefeller Museum, the British Mandate Department of Antiquities and British School of Archaeology were housed in an old building in Jerusalem with a small exhibition hall. The only other archaeological museum at the time was the Franciscan Biblical Museum, built in 1902.

In 1906, the Jewish National Fund began to negotiate the purchase of Karm el-Sheikh, a tract of land facing the northeastern corner of the Old City walls, to house the Bezalel School of Art and Crafts. The founder of the school, Boris Schatz envisaged a museum and university that would overlook the Temple Mount. In 1919, town planner Patrick Geddes proposed the establishment of an antiquities museum at this site. To further the project, the Mandate authorities proposed a special tourism tax in 1924.

Visiting Palestine in 1925, during the days of the British Mandate, James Henry Breasted, founder and director of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, recognized the need for an archaeological museum in Jerusalem to house important regional finds. Encouraged by Lord Plumer, the British High Commissioner, Breasted approached American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who agreed to donate two million dollars toward the project. Previously, he had offered to build an archeological museum in Cairo, Egypt, but he was turned down, possibly due to pressure from the British government, which was anxious to keep America from establishing a foothold in the region.